Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
After I set up the new Instagram account @CastlemoonIreland, working furiously, I upload my article in segments to the grid to go with all the different pictures I’ve captured.
Then, I tag every bridal publication I can think of and every bridal venue outlet I can remember.
Every bridal designer. I follow everybody that Ultimate Locations Wedding Magazine follows and my fingers actually ache!
For the profile picture, I use the one of Dan standing at the red castle door.
I know he will probably be mortified but it shows the castle in the moonlight with snow falling and a drop-dead handsome man looking into the distance at a young wedding party. It’s very original. Very romantic.
I’ve been so focused on the job that I’ve ignored several knocks on my bedroom door. I’ve had to. Downstairs, the sounds of the iilleann pipes from the céilí rise up through the floorboards mixed with laughter and joy.
I stretch my aching arms over my head as I look out the window.
Faith is worsening. It’s late and the snow continues to pelt down and the winds howls around the old castle.
Will my flight be cancelled? A tinge of hope seeps through me.
I check the flight app on my phone again, where I was told to stand by for further updates.
Still no news. I look back at my screen, glad I took Jill’s advice and did a black border around all the pictures – some in colour and some in black and white.
It looks like a really stylish wedding album.
‘Looking good.’ Once more I arch my aching back in the chair and my feet hit something.
Bending down, I see it’s a small footstool, the one Dan told me he used to stand on to see all the way to the ocean.
I pull it out and it topples over. As I turns it upright, I notice the writing underneath in faded black marker.
Dan was here December 1988
Galway are All-Ireland Champions 1998
GO GALWAY! SO HAPPY!
Dan Delaney is cool.
This was his bedroom growing up, I suddenly realise. Carefully, I stand on the stool and, though the weather is too bad for me to have much of a view, I watch the heavy dark clouds being blown by and the snow still falling. I feel closer to Dan than ever before.
‘I have to see him! This is ready.’ I turn on my notifications, hit post on the last image and shut my MacBook. I check the time; it’s almost eleven o’ clock at night!
I jump into the shower trying not to overthink things and then I dry quickly and slip into my full length scarlet designer dress.
The luxurious material is a sublime fit that hugs me in all the right places.
I dab foundation onto my face and blend it, add powder and blush, wand on some mascara, line my eyes with an olive-green kohl pencil, spray perfume and gloss my lips.
Then, I slip into my heels and grab my green wool coat from the back of the chair, the room key and make my way downstairs.
The lobby is empty and I take a moment to just stand by the turf fire and soak it in.
Someone has carelessly left half a pint of Guinness on the mantle above the fireplace and I remove it, wipe the surface with my clenched hand so it doesn’t leave a ring stain.
The noise in the Heart Ballroom is deafening.
The music is infectious and powerful. Once again, I get that feeling of being totally alive.
Picking my way through the jolly, happy crowd, saying hi to various people, I spot Kate, in a long pink halterneck dress.
She waves over to me, dancing with a laughing Jimmy by her side.
‘We’ll be over to you in few!’ Kate shouts as I more or less lip read her words and nod. I make my way up to the bar, holding my folded coat over one arm. I deposit the empty pint glass there and Mary hands me a drink from behind the bar.
‘You look like a princess, lovey,’ she says, grinning at me as I fold my wool coat over a stool at the bar.
‘Thank you.’ I pat myself down, relieved to see two other young people behind the bar too helping her. ‘Can you not come out and relax?’
‘I like to be busy, lovey, this is how I socialise,’ Mary tells me and lifts a little glass from under the bar top, puts it to her lips. ‘I’ll have my feet up soon enough. The letter came! I got my hospital appointment for January. I’ll be brand new.’ Relief floods her face.
‘Thank God! That’s the best news,’ I gasp. I’m so delighted for her.
‘The best Christmas present I could get alright. I didn’t like to moan too much but I’ve been in serious pain,’ she tells me. ‘JP has been so worried.’
‘You didn’t moan at all! You’re seriously one of the strongest women I’ve ever met. When will I get to meet JP by the way?’ I ask after Mary’s husband and Gráinne’s father.
‘He’s still above in Dublin visiting his sister, Una. He might not be back until Christmas Eve night but . . .’ Mary’s face drops.
‘I’ll be gone.’ I don’t pretend to be happy about it.
‘Hi Mammy! Great to see ya, Maggie! Some craic!’ Gráinne appears beside me, smiling in a beautiful charcoal grey sleeveless jumpsuit with a man by her side in a uniform. ‘This is Fergus, just back from Lebanon.’
‘Hey Gráinne. Nice to meet you, Fergus.’ I raise my voice over the drumming of the bodhrán.
‘You too.’ Fergus shakes my hand; it’s a firm grip.
‘Look at you! You look incredible! Love that dress, you look like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman! Oh my God, stunning! We’re delighted you made it!
’ Gráinne shouts back. ‘I knocked on your bedroom door a few times but no answer. Dan’s been keeping an eye on the door all night.
’ Gráinne winks at me and turns her head.
As I follow her eyeline, it lands on Dan across the room, watching me.
‘Oh lord, literally,’ I say to Gráinne as Dan, who is wearing a sharp black suit, black tie and white dress shirt, raises a hand and I lift mine in a return wave. As he makes a move someone approaches him and strikes up a conversation.
‘Not bad to look at is our Dan. You do know yer the talk of the village?’ She sucks her drink up through a straw.
‘I am?’ I ask her with a grimace. Is it about Frederick, I wonder?
‘Oh yeah, in a good way!’ she says, clearly reading my expression, and reassures me. ‘Seems you’ve captured the heart of the lord himself.’
‘Gráinne? Why did no one tell me he was the lord of the castle?’ I lean into her, glance back over at Dan who is still talking.
‘Ah, we’re fierce protective of him. Many a woman has come along thinking she’ll be rich, then buggered off when she found out he was asset rich but cash poor. One in particular we all recall. Denise Donoghue, horrible, greedy woman.’ Gráinne scrunches up her nose like there’s a bad smell.
‘Ahh, I see,’ I say. ‘Not Denise’s number one fan, I’m guessing?’
‘Nope. She’s Jimmy’s first cousin but very unlike all the rest of the very decent Murphy clan.
No doubt she’ll arrive down from Belfast and pop her head up at Kate’s wedding next week.
I’ll be steering well clear.’ A man is wrapping Fergus in a bear hug, as Gráinne gets sucked up by the new crowd at the bar.
Denise will be at Kate’s wedding. But I won’t be.
The thought flattens me. I sip my drink, watching the dancing for a moment.
All the women dance barefoot, their high heels strewn across the floor, heads thrown back, laughing freely.
It’s inspiring and stunning to watch. The music is incredibly powerful, and even though I have never heard this type of music properly before, I simply cannot get enough of it.
It’s a far cry from the stiff Acquired Finance balls I’m used to attending.
Ireland, it seems, is very much part of my DNA.
As I watch Jimmy twirl a delighted Kate around the dancefloor, I have a moment of clarity.
‘My God, my life is dull,’ I say as I look down to the parquet floor.
‘It’s so dull.’ Then, a wave of calmness rushes over me, like I have finally admitted the truth to myself.
I’ve been living in a bubble of self-preservation that was so unhealthy and closed off to everything life has to offer.
I feel like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz when her life goes from black and white to technicolour.
Then the sound of a smooth, fluid bow strike on the fiddle.
A rich tone that resonates a soft, melodic tune and the crowd of couples begin to move in closer together.
More people rush past me, pushing their way onto the dancefloor.
I feel a tingling sensation all along my arms as the powerful music envelops me.
The glass of whatever it is I’m drinking may be more powerful than I’d imagined.
‘May I?’ Dan stands in front of me now with his hand reaching out. I finish the drink, put the glass on the bar as I accept it.
‘Hello you,’ I say to him, a little merry.
‘Hello,’ he replies, smirking at me. ‘You look wonderful. When I looked across the room you literally took my breath away,’ he tells me and immediately I recall the words he said to Séamus. I’ll marry the woman who takes my breath away.
‘Thank you,’ I accept his compliment confidently, ‘you don’t look too bad yourself but I don’t know how to Irish dance,’ I tell him.
He puts his hands on my waist and pulls me closer to him. Our bodies tight together. He looks happy, more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him, and I’m delighted.
‘There is no right or wrong way to dance here,’ he whispers in my ear, his breath hot on my face. I shut my eyes, lost in the slow, haunting music. We dance cheek to cheek and I can’t help feeling I am right where I am supposed to be. When the song ends we stay on the dancefloor.
‘How was the meeting? How did it go with the villagers?’ I lean back a little.
‘Good, they’re an amazing community, all on my side. We’ll all pull together. We’ll make it work. And . . . they were all very encouraging of one thing.’ His dark eyes twinkle.
‘What was that?’ I tilt my head to the side.
‘You,’ he says on a hot breath.
‘Really?’ I replace my cheek against his.
‘Yes, they all want me to be happy and have a life,’ I hear him say into my ear.
‘I’m sorry about earlier at the pub, I didn’t quite know how to react.’ Somehow, it’s easier for me to be honest with him when we’re this close. Every part of my body feels acutely alive but my brain tells me this is going to break my heart. I leave in twenty-four hours!
‘It’s alright, I understand,’ Dan whispers into my ear again, ‘I just have a sense of you.’
‘And I, you.’ My voice wobbles and I hold him tighter to me, his body rock hard. I’m afraid to ever let him go. The irony of how I’ve lived my life for the past two years, sworn off love, is not lost on me.
‘I think you are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, Maggie Grace,’ his cologne strikingly recognisable, ‘but much more importantly, the smartest, the most fascinating, the most captivating, the most intriguing.’
I don’t know what to say but my heart lifts to the highest it’s ever been. Every nerve is tingling.
‘I think maybe the fates want us to be together?’ Dan goes on.
‘It almost seems that way,’ I whisper back on a shaking breath.
‘I just wish you lived here in Ireland. I wish that you didn’t have to go back so soon,’ he says as a tin whistle begins on a high note, going higher and higher, mimicking my heartbeat.
‘Me too’ is all I say as the bodhrán joins in with a deep, resonant thump. We stand still, cheek to cheek, just listening to the holistic sounds of the trad band. I feel grounded in energy, with a sense of lightness and joy I want to bottle.
‘Will ya come have a drink with me in my office? Just the two of us? Just for a little while, so we can talk?’ Dan leans back from my face, his eyes sparkle with what I think is happiness and I nod empathically. He follows me as I pick my coat up from the stool at the bar.
If Storm Faith doesn’t keep me here, in Castlemoon, a little longer I will surely cry.
As the music continues and the dancefloor sways, I take a quick glance around.
Candles glimmer and flicker, the entire room seems to be slow dancing – no doubt many happily married Heartwell couples blessed with their union under this very roof – as we manage to slip out, unnoticed.